The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus which ejects liquid toward a target medium, and more particularly, to a liquid ejecting apparatus, configured to transport a tray in which the target medium such as an optical disc or the like can be set.
Here, the term “liquid ejecting apparatus” is used for referring not only to a recording apparatus, such as a printer, a copier, and a facsimile machine, having an ink jet recording head for ejecting ink from the recording head so as to perform recording on a recording medium but also to an apparatus that causes liquid to adhere onto a medium, corresponding to the recording medium in the above-described recording apparatus, by ejecting liquid selected depending on the use of the apparatus in place of ink onto the medium from a liquid ejecting head corresponding to the above-described ink jet recording head.
As the liquid ejecting head, the following heads can be considered other than the above-described recording head: a color-material ejecting head used for manufacturing a color filter for a liquid crystal display or the like, an electrode-material (conductive paste) ejecting head used for forming an electrode in an organic electroluminescent (EL) display or a field-emission display (FED), a bioorganic compound ejecting head used for manufacturing a bio-chip, and a sample spraying head as a precision pipette.
As examples of the recording apparatus and the liquid ejecting apparatus, an ink jet recording apparatus (hereinafter, referred to as a “printer”) which directly ejects ink on a labeled surface of an optical disc, for example, a compact disc, thereby performing recording is used. That is, after the optical disc as a target medium is set on a tray formed of a plate body, the tray is transported into a medium transporting path by a transporting roller, and then recording is performed.
In such a printer, a guide member (attachment: hereinafter, referred to as “tray guide”) for guiding the tray toward the front of the apparatus is detachably provided. Then, at the time of performing recording on the optical disc, the tray guide is installed, and the tray is sent from the tray guide inside the apparatus. Accordingly, the tray is transported to a recording start position by the transporting roller while being supported on the tray guide (for example, see Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-211757A).
Further, an ejecting roller provided on a downstream of a recording head generally has a driving roller that is driven to be rotated and a follower roller that is brought into contact with the driving roller to be rotated by the driving roller. As the follower roller, a spur roller which has a serrated circumference is used in order to prevent dot omission or ink transport. However, there is an optical disc which has a data area just below a labeled surface, and thus, if the spur roller is pressed into contact with the labeled surface of such an optical disc, data of the optical disc may be destroyed. For this reason, in a recording apparatus which can perform recording on the optical disc, the follower roller and the driving roller are spaced apart from each other.
As an example of such a configuration, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-130774A, a recording apparatus is disclosed in which a stacker for stacking sheets of paper to be ejected is displaceably provided between a first position and a second position so as to be used as a tray guide. According to this configuration, in connection with the position switching operation of the stacker, the follower roller can be displaced correspondingly, and the operation of the user can be simplified. In addition, the tray guide is integrally provided in the recording apparatus, and thus the tray guide does not need to be separately managed, thereby implementing a user-friendly apparatus.
Moreover, although the follower roller (the spur roller) is spaced apart from the driving roller, if the tray is elevated from a tray supporting face in the tray guide, the optical disc set on the tray may be brought into contact with the follower roller, and a data area of the optical disc may be damaged.
Accordingly, in order to prevent such a problem, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-211757A, a tray is disclosed in which the distance from a set region of the optical disc in the tray to a leading end of the tray is made large. In this case, when the tray is sent in the transporting path from the downstream of the follower roller toward the upstream, the optical disc and the follower roller do not face each other until the leading end of the tray is nipped by the transporting rollers on the upstream of the recording head. According to this configuration, in a state in which the leading end of the tray is not nipped by the transporting rollers, that is, in a state in which the tray is easily elevated from the tray guide, the optical disc and the follower roller do not face each other, and thus the optical disc can be prevented from being brought into contact with the follower roller.
However, in the conventional configurations described above, the following four problems occur.
First, in order to switch the stacker described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-130774A from the second position (a position for stacking sheets of paper) to the first position (a position for guiding the tray), the stacker in a substantially horizontal posture is rotated to be in a vertical posture once, is lifted upward, and then is rotated to be in the substantially horizontal posture again. The switching operation from the first position to the second position is performed in reverse order. However, it may be hard for the user to understand such an operation. Further, in order to rotate and moves vertically the stacker, a space of the recording apparatus in its heightwise direction needs to be provided.
Second, if the size of the tray is made such that the optical disc set on the tray is not brought into contact with the follower roller, as described above, the size of the printer in its depthwise direction is made large or the leading end of the tray projects to the rear side of the printer at the time of performing recording on the optical disc, which causes a problem in that the installment space in the rear side of the printer needs to be made large.
In addition, recently, for the sake of enhancing a throughput, the recording head tends to be made large. In this case, however, the medium transporting path from the transporting roller to the ejecting roller is elongated, and the length of the tray needs to be further lengthened accordingly, such that the above-described problem occurs more drastically. In addition, even when the follower roller is spaced apart from the driving roller and the follower roller is caused to slide along paper ejecting direction, the medium transporting path from the transporting roller to the ejecting roller is elongated, and thus the above-described problem occurs more drastically.
Third, in a state in which the tray is supported by the tray guide, if the position switching operation of the tray guide is executed, the optical disc set on the tray may be brought into contact with the spur roller, and thus the data area may be damaged. Further, if larger force than is necessary is applied and a compulsive position switching operation is performed, the optical disc set on the tray or the tray itself may be damaged.
Fourth, in order to cause the follower roller and the driving roller to be spaced apart from each other, a roller supporting frame for supporting the rotary shaft of the follower roller can be configured to slide in the medium transporting direction. With such a configuration, the size of the apparatus in its heightwise direction can be reduced, without needing the vertical space of the apparatus.
However, since the roller supporting frame has a shape which is long in a widthwise direction of the target medium, if the roller supporting frame is configured to slide in a direction perpendicular to the widthwise direction, that is, in the medium transporting direction, the posture of the roller supporting frame may be easily inclined at the time of the sliding operation, and thus a smooth sliding operation may not be performed. In addition, the sliding operation may be difficult.